Missouri’s Lake of the Ozarks Ranked Among America’s Cleanest

Over the years, Lake of the Ozarks in Missouri has been given many honors, but this is one adjective I've never heard used before now. A new ranking says that the most popular lake in Missouri also happens to be one of the cleanest in America. Go figure.

World Atlas recently ranked the cleanest lakes in America. This isn't just a writer's opinion, but is based on pollution ratings from the Environmental Integrity Project's review of waterways. They said that monitors "analyzed chemical-monitoring data from the National Water Quality Monitoring Council for the 100 largest US lakes between January 2020 and July 2025". The idea was to determine the lakes in the United States that are safest for swimming, fishing and good for aquatic life. With all of those numbers crunched, they said that Lake of the Ozarks is the 4th cleanest lake in America with a pollution score of just 1.85. Only Lake Superior, Lake Chelan and Lake Hartwell had better pollution scores than Lake of the Ozarks in Missouri.

How refreshing (no pollution pun intended) that Lake of the Ozarks gets recognition for having clean waters since many national sites love to declare how dangerous it is without also mentioning the positives. Yes, the number of accidents that happen there are high, but don't blame the water for what sometimes reckless humans do when adventuring there. The fact that Missouri and those that call Lake of the Ozarks home have done such a great job keeping civilization from polluting those waters needs to be recognized more often.